• If you do not sign a prenuptial agreement, your marriage will be governed by the California Family Code and Probate Code. Why not decide what rules should apply to you and your spouse in the event of a divorce instead of allowing the State to do so?

• Over fifty per cent of marriages end in divorce and one in ten couples now enter into some kind of prenuptial agreement.

• A prenuptial agreement allows you to decide how you will divide assets and debts in a divorce and how much spousal support, if any, should be paid.

• Throughout the history of marriage some form of premarital contract has underpinned the institution of marriage. For example, for two thousand years, Jewish marriages have been preceded by a prenuptial agreement called the “Ketubah.”

• Far from undermining trust, the process of drafting and negotiating a prenuptial agreement may, in fact, strengthen your relationship. The process requires a full disclosure of your financial situation and involves an open and honest discussion of about how you will handle your money and plan your future. One psychiatrist states: “openly agreed upon rules are likely to be a better foundation for growth than are those latent rules that surface and prove to be either disagreeable or downright outrageous.”

• Prenups prepare you for marriage. Sooner or later you are going to have to talk about money issues. Why not do it now and save heartache and trouble later on? After your honeymoon is over you will soon find out how earning and spending money is an integral part of your marriage. The Catholic Church recognized this fact and incorporates a prenuptial dialogue in a marital preparation process called “Pre-Cana.”

• Prenups can be drafted to protect both spouses not just a wealthy spouse.

IT JUST MAKES SENSE

• No-one plans on their house burning down, ending up in a nursing home or suffering a disability but they still take out insurance. As Dr. Ruth says: “We live in such a litigious society. Nobody knows what life brings. Hopefully we will never need it. What’s the big deal? Let’s do it and give it to the attorneys…for the new millennium, a prenup is part of a mature relationship, based on love, mutual trust and optimism.”

“He therefore who lacking of his due in the most native and human end of marriage, thinks it better to part then to live sadly and injuriously to that cheerful covenant (for not to be belov'd & yet retain'd, is the greatest injury to a gentle spirit) he I say who therefore seeks to part, is one who highly honours the married life, and would not stain it: and the reasons which now move him to divorce, are equal to the best of those that could first warrant him to marry; for, as was plainly shewn, both the hate which now diverts him and the loneliness which leads him still powerfully to seek a fit help, hath not the least grain of a sin in it, if he be worthy to understand himself.” John Milton, 1664 “The doctrine and discipline of divorce.”